Assessing and evaluating community organizations' capacity for working in HIV/AIDS responses in India, Ecuador and Cambodia

Abstract Civil society programmes and funding mechanisms need tools to assess capacities of organizations to identify credible partners and further build their capacity to absorb funds and implement programmes. However, for all the investment in capacity building, results and impact are often difficult to evaluate, although most programmes monitor process indicators. The International HIV/AIDS Alliance is running a multi‐country prevention programme with over 60 community organizations where participatory analysis of partners' capacities at the beginning of a programme will accelerate capacity building and provide baseline data to evaluate increases in capacity and impacts on programme outcomes. The work has contributed to a new printed toolkit for analysing NGO capacity. Unlike many assessment tools, the toolkit provides participatory training hand‐in‐hand with participatory appraisal methods, to enable organisations to critically reflect and motivate for change internally. The scope of the toolkit goes beyond traditional organisational development, to look at other areas of capacity instrumental for organisations providing services and working for change related to HIV/AIDS. The toolkit is freely available from the organisation's website ( www.aidsalliance.org ). Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.